Friday, January 12, 2018

Season 11 division 3 final results

Division 3 is finished and the qualifiers for division 2 are Fritz and Laser.

The final crosstable is

According to the rules published on the TCEC main site the last two engines, Ethereal and ChessBrain, will be relegated to division 4. However it is not clear whether this is the final decision.

There were no crashes in the last two RRs. Pedone was a strike away from being disqualified, but it managed to finish its 14 games without crashing. ChessBrain also had two time losses in the first half, but since it was ranked 7th another crash would not have made a difference.

Of the 7 openings of RRs 3-4 two had drawish results. Rounds 19 and 26 were 8 Russian Games with 6/8 draws, rounds 21 and 28 were mostly Pirc and Old Benoni with all 8 games drawn.

Ethereal had a rare win against Senpai in round 22. Senpai got into a worse position after the opening, and had to give a rook for pawns. The game was over quickly, with many pieces on the board and Ethereal with a significant material advantage.

Nemorino managed to beat Fritz in round 23, Fritz's only loss in the division. Nemorino had a strong king side attack that got it a two pawn advantage, and then it traded down to a winning queen ending.

Laser lost to Senpai in round 24, the only minimatch Laser lost in the division. Laser started the game with an eval advantage, Senpai equalized and took the initiative. Senpai exchanged pieces until only RB vs RB were left. Laser's king was under a mating threat, and Senpai's king was able to march forward and join the attack. Eventually Senpai captured the white bishop, winning the game.

Reducing the crosstable to the top 5 engines the ranks are as follows:
Pedone +2, Fritz and Laser +1, Nemorino =, Defenchess -4. This is a bit surprising to me. Fritz, Laser and Defenchess are ranked high mostly because of their positive results against the bottom 3 engines.

The qualifiers will now join Jonny, Bobcat, Texel, Vajolet, Wasp and Arasan in
division 2. I think Jonny has a good chance of qualifying since it had better results than the other 5 engines back in season 10. It's hard to say how Fritz and Laser will do in this division. Division 2 will have 2 double RRs,
28 games per engine, same as division 3. The
time control will be 45+10, slightly longer games but still too fast for me.